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chapter eighteen

Argus Station

SysGov, 2981 CE


Isaac walked into Gordian Operations, back in his SysPol blues, and looked around for Agent Anton Silchenko. He used his wetware to highlight the dozen or so agents with nametags and quickly found the man beside the large cluster of abstract displays at the room’s center. He and Susan headed over.

“Agent Silchenko?” Isaac asked from behind the man.

Silchenko turned to face Isaac, a look in his eyes that said, “Why are you bothering me?” But then he took in Susan’s uniform, and the expression morphed into one of recognition.

“Ah. You two must be Cho and Cantrell. My IC mentioned you were heading this way. What can I do for you?”

“We were hoping you could help us sort out a problem.” Isaac held out his palm and summoned the transit records Cephalie had retrieved from the station. “We’re working to confirm the recent activities of Scaffold Delta and ran into a bit of a snag. The scaffold was brought to Argus Station recently for unscheduled maintenance. We’d like your help taking a deeper look at those records.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. Radnyk?”

“Yes, sir!” A young man appeared next to Silchenko, fresh faced with a pronounced Adam’s apple. He wore a rugged uniform consisting of a dark green tunic, tough brown pants, and black boots that came up almost to his knees. An archaic rifle hung on a strap across his shoulder.

“This is Agent Radnyk, my integrated companion,” Silchenko said. “Radnyk, can you pull the records they’re looking for?”

“Already done, sir,” the AC replied crisply, a clipboard appearing in one hand.

“Very good.” Silchenko accepted the file transfer and opened the contents. “Looks like the crew encountered a bit of impeller flutter and brought the ship in to be serviced. Not entirely unexpected, given how much turbulence they experience.”

“Turbulence?” Isaac asked.

“The short version is the scaffolds transport ships and material that weren’t designed for transdimensional flight. This places significant strain on their drive systems, which is made even worse when some of them haul cargoes of exotic matter. Most of the exotic material destined for Providence is chronometrically reactive, and that makes the wear-and-tear even worse.”

“What about the repairs themselves?” Isaac asked. “We weren’t able to pull the full maintenance record, since the scaffold spent a significant part of the visit off station.”

“Which is typical. Once the repairs were completed, the crew would’ve taken the scaffold out for a test flight.”

“What would this flight consist of?”

“Depends on the ship’s role. For a scaffold, you’re looking at several trips back and forth across the outer wall, and then a jaunt through the transverse and back. If any problems crop up, the maintenance alert gets escalated, and additional personnel are brought in to assess the situation and put together an action plan.”

“How long do these test flights last?”

“Thirty to forty minutes for an issue like this. An hour, tops. That’s more than enough time to determine if the fix is solid.”

“Then why do station records show Scaffold Delta was absent from its hangar for three whole days?”

“They . . . ” Silchenko blinked at Isaac, then looked down at the report. “They do?”

“I’m afraid so. I take it that’s not normal.”

“It most certainly isn’t.” Silchenko turned to his IC. “Radnyk?”

“Checking now, sir.” Another clipboard appeared in his hands, and he quickly thumbed through the pages. “The detective is right, sir. Scaffold Delta’s test flight lasted seventy-one hours and forty-two minutes.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Silchenko growled. “Go through the whole damn report. Sniff out anything that doesn’t look right.”

“Yes, sir!” The sheaf of paper on his clipboard thickened, and he rifled through the pages with superhuman speed. “I found something else, sir. The amount of exotic matter used in the repairs is unusually high—about ten tons more than they needed—and I can’t find any reason why they requested so much.”

“Who requested the extra material?” Isaac asked.

“That would have been the scaffold’s crew,” Silchenko said.

“Consisting of?”

“Agents Diego Vidali and Alex Creed,” Silchenko read off the report. “We have two agents running each of the scaffolds as part of our two-pilot rule. They ordered the raw materials, which we delivered to their hangar. An issue like this wouldn’t rate a dedicated maintenance bay, so they would have used their own drones to carry out the repairs, only calling in specialized support if needed.”

Isaac pulled up the bios on the two agents. Creed was a ninety-eight-year-old synthoid with a solid and dependable—if unremarkable—service record in SysPol, having spent a few decades aboard Argo Division corvettes in various roles. His bald, egg-shaped head and squinty eyes gave his face a dull, uninterested demeanor. His synthoid still possessed superhuman strength suitable for extended periods in high-gee environments, having never been downgraded after his transfer to Gordian.

Vidali was one hundred twelve years old and somewhat new to his existence as an AC, having transitioned from organic to abstract after his one hundredth birthday. He and Creed had served together aboard the corvette Vigilance. They had apparently hit it off enough to integrate that same year. Vidali’s avatar resembled a glassy, humanoid container with blue fluid sloshing around on the inside. His eyes were hot, glowing points.

“And did they?” Isaac looked up from the document. “Ask for any specialized assistance?”

“No,” Radnyk said. “They performed all the work themselves. We only supplied the raw material.”

“What could someone do with the exotic material you sent them?” Isaac asked.

“Not much,” Silchenko said. “Most of the impellers we have in service range from five hundred to nine hundred tons. Ten tons doesn’t get you very far.”

“It could be used to modify an existing impeller, though,” Radnyk said.

“Yeah. You could do that.” Silchenko looked over his virtual copy of the report. “But why?”

“The other issue, Agent,” Isaac said, “is the window Scaffold Delta went unaccounted for overlaps the disappearance and destruction of Reality Flux, with margins before and after.”

“Are you suggesting one of our own scaffolds stole that ship?”

“I am.”

“No way.” Silchenko shook his head. “We would’ve seen them phase out, clear as day. There’s no way they could sneak past the Argus Array.”

“Unless they modified their impeller with stealth baffles,” Susan suggested.

The conversation ground to a sudden halt, and everyone turned to her.

“Those extra ten tons had to be for something, right?” she added in an almost apologetic voice.

Isaac raised a questioning eyebrow to Silchenko.

“Oh, hell.” Silchenko put a hand to his temple. “The Commissioner is going to strip my hide over this one.”

* * *

Klaus-Wilhelm von Schröder considered whose hide he was going to strip over this latest debacle.

The Saturn business last year had been bad enough, what with the death of Joachim Delacroix, his chief engineer at the time, and a fully functional impeller almost making it into the hands of a criminal syndicate. Andover-Chen had also died at the outset of that case, but fortunately for him—for all of Gordian, really—the scientist had saved his connectome at a mindbank and only ended up losing six months of memories. A small price to pay compared to permanent death.

I’ll start with Vidali and Creed, he told himself, his thoughts as cold as death. If there’s even the slightest hint they looked the other way while this was going on—or worse, are involved somehow—I’ll see the full force of the law brought to bear.

And when it came to Gordian Protocol violations of this magnitude, the trials would almost assuredly end in execution.

But they know that. Every agent under my command does. So why would they betray us like this? If that really is what’s going on here . . . 

Klaus-Wilhelm stared at the suspended schematic of Scaffold Delta, his face a stern, focused mask. Andover-Chen stood beside him along with Detective Isaac Cho, together in his CHRONO Operations office. The scientist’s fingers danced over his virtual interface, controlling several remotes and a conveyor as they moved down the spine of the ship. The conveyor carried a small but sensitive chronometric scope.

The scaffolds were significant departures from the standard elliptical designs of most TTVs, featuring a somewhat morbid shape that resembled a huge rib cage, with the impeller serving as the end of its elongated spine. Those ribs joined back to the main drive systems and power plants within the spine, allowing the ship’s chronometric field to extend far beyond its main body and for it to carry a wide assortment of other vessels and containers through transdimensional space, though at a terrific cost in energy.

The design had been adapted and refined from the original three used to carry SysPol cruisers in their failed assault on the Dynasty almost a year ago, and current models featured significant increases to their temporal speed, lift capacity, and reliability.

The scaffolds fell under the direct control of the Gordian Division—his division—and he’d believed them secure from any malicious use thanks to their crews of Gordian agents.

He should have known better. Where there were people, there was corruption.

Perhaps he should have done more, but he could only exert so much control without micromanaging the organization into the ground. He was only one man, no matter how experienced and driven. His agents needed someone to act as a guiding force, to focus their attention on the most critical tasks, but he needed them to step up, to bring their talents, energy, and expertise to bear on the massive, terrifying challenges before them. The burden of command was his, but he couldn’t shoulder the rest on his own.

He needed the men, women, and abstracts under his command.

Which was why the metaphorical knife of this betrayal cut so deeply.

“There, sir.” Andover-Chen gestured to the schematic, and an outline formed around the point where the main hull met the impeller.

“What am I looking at?” Klaus-Wilhelm asked.

“Cosmetic paneling over hidden modifications, I believe. The scope has picked up several unidentified protrusions along the impeller’s base. These panels here, here, and here would normally come into direct contact with the impeller, providing some measure of structural integrity and shock absorption. But they appear to have been hollowed out on the inside, most likely to afford space for the modifications.”

“Could those protrusions be stealth baffles?”

“Possibly,” Andover-Chen said. “I’d need to take a closer look to be sure. It certainly resembles our own attempts to replicate Admin stealth technology. But regardless of what they are, they shouldn’t be there at all.”

“Then the impeller has been illegally modified?”

“Yes, sir. Undoubtedly.”

“That’s enough for now.” Klaus-Wilhelm faced Detective Cho. “What about Vidali and Creed?”

“Very little movement, sir. Creed is back in the temporary lodging he and the other scaffold crews have been using recently. Vidali is lurking in the nearby infostructure. The two appear to be killing time with a movie.”

Klaus-Wilhelm nodded thoughtfully. Agent Creed possessed a synthoid body. Not the scariest model in Gordian’s arsenal, but capable enough to make his arrest a challenge should he decide to resist. Agent Vidali was even worse, since he served as Creed’s integrated companion, and his abstract nature made locking him down a slippery affair in the best of times.

Klaus-Wilhelm could have chosen to swarm the scaffold’s crew with an overwhelming number of physical and abstract agents, and that still remained one possible approach, but he’d decided to place Cho and Cantrell in charge of the apprehension. The pair had brought this fiasco to his attention, and on top of that, they had experience bringing criminals in alive. More so than any of his agents. They’d earned the right to take the lead here, and he felt no desire to deny them this simple but important honor.

“Bring them in,” he ordered the detective.

“Yes, sir.” Isaac opened a comm window. “Cho to Cantrell.”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re clear to proceed.”

* * *

“Data cordon active,” Cephalie reported from the LENS beside Susan. “All virtual pathways out are blocked, and I have full control of the interior.”

“Then let’s give them the bad news.” Susan rested a hand on her holstered pistol. “Open it up.”

The door split open, leaving the virtual DO NOT DISTURB sign hovering in midair. Susan strode in, followed by the LENS and a pair of Gordian synthoids that spread out to either side behind her. Creed slouched in a metal chair next to his synthoid charging casket, and Vidali floated next to him. The room was otherwise unfurnished.

Two more Gordian synthoids waited outside the door at the far end.

A semi-immersive movie played in the background, visible in the room’s shared vision. It featured two ridiculously massive robots fighting hand-to-hand in space. Creed paused the movie with a wave of his hand and looked over with a sour expression.

“What the hell is this?” he spat. “Didn’t you see the . . . ?”

He trailed off as he registered Susan and the agents behind her.

“Alex Creed and Diego Vidali,” she began in a firm, clear voice, “you are both under arrest for violations of the Gordian Protocol.”

“Is this your idea of a joke?” Vidali grumbled, standing up. His avatar faded for a moment then snapped back into clarity. “Hey! What gives? I can’t transfer out of here!”

“I think she’s serious.” Creed shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“Very serious.” Susan motioned the LENS forward. “Cephalie, take them into custody.”

“Right away.”

The LENS floated over to the wall, removed one of the panels, and connected a pseudopod to the infosystem underneath.

“Now hold on a sec—” Vidali vanished mid-sentence.

“Got him,” Cephalie reported. “I have his connectome stored in a suspended state.” She hovered toward Creed.

The man gulped audibly, then raised both hands. Slowly.

“Look, this has got to be a misunderstanding.” He raised his hands higher and bowed his head.

“You can tell us all about it later,” Susan said.

The LENS floated behind his neck, then extended a pseudopod.

A standard arrest involved restraining the subject with cuffs or the LENS’ prog-steel shell. However, Creed—with his Argo Division body—could break free of most restraints with relative ease. That necessitated the introduction of specialized microbots into his body’s maintenance loop. Once administered, the swarm would regulate his body’s abilities, disabling some or all of them if necessary. Creed would quite literally become a prisoner in his own body.

At least, that’s what was supposed to happen.

Instead, the lights turned off.

Susan drew her pistol, momentarily blinded. She could see in the dark, but the transition wasn’t instantaneous, and it took her eyes a precious moment to switch modes. She heard the far door swish open, saw a brief glimpse of Creed bolting through it. The LENS hit the ground with a loud clank.

The pair of Gordian synthoids guarding the far exit hadn’t expected the door to open suddenly, but that didn’t mean they weren’t prepared. They grabbed hold of Creed almost instantly, restraining him at the shoulders.

Creed reached for one of their sidearms and tore it loose from the holster, a useless gesture since he lacked the weapon’s passcode and—

He unloaded the pistol on full auto, each shot kicking his aim upward, blasting an ugly diagonal up the agent’s chest until it blew one of his arms off at the shoulder. Creed twisted out of the damaged—and possibly downed—agent’s grasp and pulled the other synthoid behind him to block the doorway, depriving Susan of a clean shot.

Creed brought the pistol up and unloaded several more shots through the second agent’s chest. One of the mag darts grazed Susan’s ear.

Creed kicked the agent aside then sprinted out of sight.

Susan dashed after him, but the door whisked shut. She managed to jam one hand through the crack before it crunched down on her fingers.

“Cephalie!” she barked, disengaging her body’s safety limiters. “What happened?”

She forced the door open just enough to slip through, catching sight of Creed as he disappeared down the bend.

“That connectome I grabbed was a decoy!” Cephalie explained. “Vidali hit the LENS with a virus, then almost killed me with a codeburner! He’s loose in the infostructure! One AC agent down, three injured, but the rest of us are in pursuit!”

“Stay on him! I’m going after Creed!”

Susan raced after the rogue agent.

His ID vanished from the station’s infostructure, but she could still hear his boots tromping away. She followed the noise, pursuing the man at reckless speeds into an unfinished section of the station that was nothing more than skeletal grid rather than actual levels. She sped across a structural support spanning a twenty-story drop, then crossed into a semi-complete zone and spotted Creed at the end of a long straightaway.

Creed spun halfway around to face her and popped off a quick shot, which punched Susan in the shoulder. Her uniform stiffened, absorbing some of the kinetic energy, but the bullet still pierced through. It gouged a crater in her cosmetic layer, but failed to inflict any real damage.

Susan raised her heavy pistol and returned fire. Her first shot demolished Creed’s weapon and forearm in a spray of metal, artificial muscles, and flaps of cosmetic skin. He staggered back, putting his weight on a knee that suddenly exploded from her second shot.

He cried out and collapsed to the ground.

Susan slowed to a jog and aimed her pistol at his head.

“Had enough?” she asked as Gordian agents began to catch up.

“I have! I have!” Creed pleaded, raising his undamaged hand.

* * *

Cephalie pursued her quarry through the station’s infostructure, which manifested as an expansive web of disjointed chambers suspended within a black void. Each chamber matched up with a physical room, though the narrow pathways linking them carried data instead of physical objects or persons.

She sensed her target a few rooms ahead and above her, and she zipped through the connection to the next abstract space.

“Give it up, Vidali!” she shouted. “There’s nowhere for you to run!”

“Just you try and stop me!” he taunted, a moment before another Gordian agent dropped out of runtime, desperate to preserve his connectome against the viruses eating his mind.

“Stop rushing in!” she snapped to the Gordian agents on what she hoped was an uncompromised channel. “Surround him! Shut down the pathways and box him in! I’ll take him down!”

Acknowledgments registered in her mind, and she zipped to the next room. The Gordian agents spread out, and pathways above and below her began to darken. Vidali teleported to the left, and she followed him, but more pathways dimmed, and soon he found himself corralled into a dead end.

Cephalie materialized behind him, into a space resembling one of the station’s utility hangars, where oversized representations of drones rested in giant charging racks. Vidali paused before them, his mind testing each connection, only to find them unresponsive.

“Trying to grab yourself a physical body?” She wagged a finger at him. “Naughty, naughty.”

Vidali spun and faced her. His body had morphed during the pursuit, bulging outward into a brutish, hulking form composed of swirling blue eddies armored in diamond plates. He hefted a massive diamond sword in one hand and a transparent multibarreled cannon in the other.

“You think you can take me on?” Vidali rumbled at her, his eyes hot, glowing pits.

“No thinking necessary.” Cephalie rested both hands atop her cane. “I know I can.”

“Alone?”

“The others would just get in my way.”

“Ha! I almost killed you once already. What makes you think you’ll do better this time?”

“Sure, you got the jump on me back there.” She flashed an insincere smile. “That virus cocooned in a fake connectome was a neat trick. But that’s the last time I’ll ever let you have the upper hand.”

“You’ll ‘let’ me, huh? Don’t be ridiculous.” He raised his sword. “I’m going to flay your mind and wear it like coat!”

He charged, closing the distance with a teleport. He swung down at her, and she brought her cane up to meet his massive weapon. The two clashed in a snap-flash of screaming, pixelated reality. Vidali pressed in, but her defenses held firm, legs braced, cane wielded with both hands.

“So,” he growled, “you have one, too. That twig a codeburner?”

“Surprised?”

“Hardly!” He teleported back and raised his cannon, its barrels spinning into action.

Cephalie plucked the sunflower from her hat and slapped it onto her forearm. It grew to form a large, round shield rimmed with yellow petals.

Vidali’s cannon roared to life, showering her with a torrent of malicious code, but she blocked the assault, sending shards of corruption flying in all directions. The room devolved into chunky pixels wherever they landed.

Cephalie zipped around to his flank and armed a multi-instance viral attack. The petals on her shield bristled like a ring of yellow daggers, then shot off in a speeding, disjointed halo. Dozens of petal-missiles arced toward Vidali, converging on him from all directions, and colorful splashes wracked his virtual body. He staggered back, glaring at her with only one eye, the other reduced to an incoherent smear.

“Had enough?” she taunted.

Vidali vanished, reappearing behind her as he swung down with his sword. She blocked the attack with her sunflower shield, but his codeburner outclassed her defenses. Its blade sank in, and her shield dissolved into winking motes.

She backpedaled and blocked the attack with an upward swing of her cane, and the space between them flashed as the simulation began to break down.

Vidali leered at her, shoving her back with enough force to shatter her cane into a million pieces. He swung through, cleaving off the fingertips of her right hand. She dashed back and barely avoided his rising follow-up.

“All that big talk.” Vidali advanced on her almost casually, his one eye gleaming with malice. “I expected more of a fight.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Cephalie regarded her missing fingers with a sad, almost disappointed expression, then shrugged and pointed the injured hand at Vidali. “But there’s one important detail you seem to be missing.”

“And what might that be?”

She grinned knowingly at him. “This isn’t my first tumble.”

Her palm split open four ways to reveal a cylindrical contraption that resembled the barrel of a gun. The seams expanded outward, carrying all the way down to her elbow until the four sections of her forearm levered out to reveal a hidden cannon. Vidali’s eye widened in the brief moment before the beam blew his head off and left his neck and torso a pixelated mess.

He collapsed to his knees and then would have face-planted, except he didn’t have a face anymore.

Cephalie fired two more shots, deleting his illegal weaponry. She then raised her other hand in a conjuring gesture. The floor melted upward before solidifying into a digital cage, but when she tried to lock down that part of the infostructure, she found the controls unresponsive.

“Target subdued but still in active runtime,” Cephalie reported to the Gordian agents. “Move in and check why I can’t freeze the room’s infostructure.”

Several agents acknowledged her command and sprang into action.

“Not so fast.” Vidali climbed to his feet, his head and facial features beginning to reconstitute.

“Got some fight left in you?”

“Not exactly.” He shook his pixelated, reforming head. “You may have beaten me, but you haven’t won. Be seeing you.”

His diamond armor dropped off, and his torso sagged, melting like wax beside a flame. At first Cephalie thought he was activating some sort of attack code, but then she realized the truth and once again tried to suspend this part of the infostructure.

She failed, and Vidali oozed away into a slimy, self-deleting puddle before vanishing completely.



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